The Lone Star State Turns South

Texas officially joined the Confederacy on March 1, 1861, and within days it was organizing representatives, resources and troops for the new Southern nation. So far out west, Texas would never be a central theater of the Civil War. Yet from the very beginning it played an unusually outsized role in the conflict.

The state raised vast numbers of fighting men in a motley mix of uniforms, cowboy hats and Mexican sombreros. Cowboys drove thousands of Spanish longhorns east to feed a swelling southern army. Texan generals and fighting units would play both heroic and tragic roles in the deadly combat that would unfold, fighting and dying in the war’s key battles. Texas would be the object of repeated Union invasion attempts by sea, all of which ultimately failed. Privation would set in at home. And like many heady love affairs, this one with the Confederacy would soon enough grow complicated, even bitter. That March, though, Texans were ready to give their all to the Confederacy.

Library of CongressGen. David Twiggs

Indeed, the Unionists’ situation in Texas was disastrous. Not only had Texas joined the Confederacy formally, but 3,000 troops had surrendered every federal post in Texas in an ignominious withdrawal, after which they had to be evacuated to Union territory. For that their commander, Gen. David Twiggs, was summarily dismissed from the federal Army.

A Georgia native who had logged 48 years in Union blues, Twiggs had been in poor health and had so hoped to avoid participating in the looming civil war that he even put off returning to his post at the San Antonio arsenal the previous year. Once there, he became the constant target of secessionists who wanted to seize the arsenal; they feared that if the Union army escaped to New Mexico, Twiggs could open a western front against Texas.

To root him out, the secessionists dispatched American Indian fighter Ben McCulloch. Throughout mid-February, inside the arsenal, Twiggs vacillated: he insisted he “would not be the first to shed blood,” yet he ordered his troops to pack light baggage and to open fire if the secessionists tried to take their weapons. Meanwhile, McCulloch’s force swelled to 700 armed, mounted men. He called for Twiggs’ surrender on Feb. 16, 1861 and entered San Antonio two days later.

Eventually the Unionists caved. In exchange for safe conduct to the coast, Twiggs surrendered the arsenal, all except personal arms and every federal post in the state, and he ordered all 3,000 troops to evacuate to the coast. The scene on Feb. 18, 1861 was captured in a rare photograph, known as an ambrotype. In it, riflemen prowl the rooftops. McCulloch’s horsemen line the street. Under their gaze, the humiliated Union troops file out.

Things were going poorly for Unionists on the political front as well. Texas’s secession ordinance went into effect the day after Lincoln’s inauguration, March 5; all government officials were required to swear an oath of allegiance to the Confederacy. In Austin Gov. Sam Houston, a staunch Unionist who had fought secession throughout the crisis, told his wife, Margaret: “I will never do it.” Ten days later, Houston received a final offer to take the oath. He declined. Fed up, the legislature unceremoniously fired him, appointing Lt. Gov. Edward Clark to take his place.

Secession fever set in quickly. Militia companies were raised across the state. Wealthy men funded them and experienced soldiers and American Indian fighters led them. An assortment of units in colorful uniforms drilled in town squares: part of the First Texas Infantry in red stripes, some Fourth Texas Infantry troops in gray and trimmed in blue. One cavalry commander even sported jaguar skins. There was no shortage, however, of bravado. Pvt. Ralph J. Smith, in Company K of the Second Texas Infantry, put it simply: “We knew no such words as fail.”

Infantry and cavalry alike assembled in westerners’ wide-brimmed hats; the volunteers from South Texas were partial to Mexican sombreros. They packed a frontiersman’s arsenal: shotguns, swords, knives, spears, carbines as well as Mississippi and Sharps rifles. Texans favored cavalry duty over infantry: 25,000 Texans volunteered in 1861; two-thirds formed into cavalry units.

Most men were in their 20s, a mix of migrants from the Upper and Deep South. But sprinkled throughout were Europeans, Mexicans, American Indians and even Unionists: James W. Throckmorton, the most outspoken Unionist at the Secession Convention, donned a Confederate uniform, eventually rising to general officer. In the brigade led by John Bell Hood alone was a mix of English, Welsh, Scottish, Germans, Irish, French, Jews, Dutch, at least 2,500 Mexicans — and even an American Indian.

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Texans readied the beef, too, that the Confederacy needed to feed its new army. The short-legged English cattle from north Texas quickly proved ill-equipped for the long drive east. The tough, nearly drought-proof Spanish longhorn, however, was up to the task. Cowboys herded thousands of them in south and southeast Texas for the drive across Louisiana and the Mississippi River.

Within the year, Texas forces struck out both east and west, with Terry’s Texas Rangers headed to Kentucky and an invasion force headed for New Mexico, with disastrous consequences. The Texans who fought would prove indispensable in the most vicious fighting of the war; Robert E. Lee would come to refer to Hood’s brigade as “my Texans.”

Interestingly, both men who faced off in San Antonio would go on to become Confederate generals and, in a foreshadowing of the war ahead, each would meet a quick demise. Stripped of his Union blues, Twiggs became a Confederate general but died early in the war. And the man who saw him out of Texas, McCulloch, quickly became a decorated general but died at the Battle of Pea Ridge the next year.

Richard Parker is a journalist and regular contributor to McClatchy-Tribune Information Service. He has been the visiting professional in journalism at the University of Texas at Austin and is the former associate publisher of The New Republic. Nicole Trimble contributed to this article.

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One-hundred-and-fifty years ago, Americans went to war with themselves. Disunion revisits and reconsiders America’s most perilous period — using contemporary accounts, diaries, images and historical assessments to follow the Civil War as it unfolded.